King's A*STAR PhD Studentships

Studentship Award and Eligibility

The funding available supports Home/EU students with standard research council restrictions. EU students are only eligible for a full studentship if they have lived, worked or studied within the UK for three years prior to the funding commencing. More information can be found on the UKRI website.
Please note that unfortunately, we cannot accept applications from non-EU candidates.

If English is not your first language you will be required to provide evidence that you meet the minimum English requirements of the Faculty [Band D] as prescribed by the university’s English Language requirements. If you are unable to provide this confirmation before applying any offer you are made would be conditional upon you meeting these requirements prior to enrolment and no later than the 31 of August 2019.

Students recruited to these studentships will spend up to two years in Singapore at an A*STAR Research Institute with the named A*STAR supervisor on each project. Students will receive a consumables budget and stipend from A*STAR in line UK Research and Innovation minimum rates. The Award will also include a one-time airfare grant, medical insurance and a one-time settling in allowance.

Click the below links to navigate this page:

How to Apply

Applicants must complete and submit an online admissions application, via the King’s Apply system. You will need to register an account to log onto the system.

In addition to filling out the online application form, you will also be required to upload your CV and write a personal statement. If you are an EU applicant, you will also be asked to attached a completed Fee Status Questionnaire.

For detailed instructions on the application process and guidance on filling out the form, please download the Application Guidance document.

File downloads

Click the below links to download the following application documents:

FAQs

The funding available supports Home/EU students within standard research council restrictions. EU students are only eligible for a studentship if they have lived, worked or studied in the UK for 3 years prior to the funding commencing. Please contact the Postgraduate Admissions Team to determine whether you are eligible for an award before you start the application process. If you have been classed as ‘overseas’ for fees purposes by the institution you are applying for admission to, you will not be eligible.

On your application you must provide the contact details of two academic referees. If you feel it would be more appropriate, we can accept one reference from a non-academic research environment, e.g.: an employer from a research institution or company.
Note: academic references must list a university email address and employer referees should list the official email address of the company. If you already have two references you can scan and upload these directly to King’s Apply instead (note that they must be signed and on headed paper).
Note: it is the applicant’s responsibility to ensure references are submitted to the portal by the application deadline. Be sure to start your application before the deadline and contact your referees to let them know we will be requesting a reference from them.

Referees will only receive a notification to submit an applicant’s reference once the applicant has submitted their application. Referees will not be contacted whilst the application is still in progress.
It is the applicant’s responsibility to ensure references are submitted to the portal by the application deadline and so we advise to submit you application before the deadline and contact your referees to let them know we will be requesting a reference from them.

We will be accepting applications up until 23.59 on Wednesday 3rd January, 2019. Applications submitted after this date will not be considered. We advise that you do not wait to submit your application until close to the deadline, in case there are problems with uploading documents etc. Applications missing mandatory attachments may not be considered for shortlisting.

Yes. In the research proposal section, please enter the funding code that corresponds to the theme in which your first choice project is listed as the ‘Project Title’ (see below for an example). Please list three projects of interest in order of preference in the free-text box under the Research Proposal section (see below for an example).
Project Title: Insert funding code: THEME2_2019
State your three preferred PhD projects from the list of PhD projects on offer for 2019 Entry. These should be listed in order of preference and you should include the number that is assigned to the project and the project title. Please list these in the free-text box under the Research Proposal section of the application, for example:
2.1 ‘’Project Title’’
3.4 ‘’Project Title’’
6.1 ‘’Project Title’’

You do not need to take an English Language Test before making submitting the application. However, should you be successful in gaining a studentship, this will become a condition of your offer and an IELTS test must be taken before we can make an unconditional offer.

Please be sure to complete the following sections of the form with all relevant information (all questions with an asterisk are mandatory and you will not be able to submit without answering these):
§ Personal Information*
§ Education*
§ Employment history (you will be able to enter up to five sets of employment information)
§ The ‘Nature of work’ field allows only 50 characters, but you can upload further employment information on the references screen
§ Personal statement*. Please include your personal statement in this section. You should type your personal statement directly into the Personal Statement free text box (Personal Statements uploaded onto the application as a separate PDF will not be accepted). There is a 4000 character limit, so please ensure that any text you plan to copy and paste into the box is within these limits (you should note that the Personal Statement character limit includes punctuation and spaces and so may differ from the character count in your source text).
§ CV*: upload a PDF copy of your CV as an attachment to the Personal Statement Section.
§ Fee Status Questionnaire: If you are an EU Applicant, please attach a complete Fee Status Questionnaire[CP1] to the Personal Statement section, this is a mandatory requirement of all EU Applicants.
§ References*: Contact details for two academic referees or relevant employers in research institutions/companies (we will then contact your referees directly).
§ Funding*: In the funding section of the online application form please enter the funding code that corresponds to the theme in which your first choice project is listed.
§ Research Proposal*: In the research proposal section, please enter the funding code that corresponds to the theme in which your first choice project is listed as the ‘Project Title’. Please list three projects of interest in order of preference in the free-text box under the Research Proposal section.

If you have any queries about the King’s Apply portal, please get in touch with the Admissions Team directly via the messaging service on the portal.

Application Timeline

Date

Application Stage

Applications Open

Monday 29th October 2018

Applications Close

Thursday 3rd January, midnight

Application Shortlisting

11th – 25th January

Invitations to Interview

Week commencing 28th January*

Interviews

Tuesday 19th February

Interview Outcomes

Thursday 21st February **

Acceptance of studentship offer

By Thursday 28th February

* If you have not received a response regarding your application by Wednesday 9th February, please contact the Centre for Doctoral Studies: doctoralstudies@kcl.ac.uk. Please do not contact the team regarding the outcome of your application before this date. All applicants will be informed of the outcome of their application the week commencing 28th January.

** If you have not received a response regarding your interview by Monday 25th February, please contact the Centre for Doctoral Studies: doctoralstudies@kcl.ac.uk. Please do not contact the team regarding the outcome of your application before this date.